Methods used to decide priorities for conservation action for threatened species are described in CALM Policy Statement No. 50 Setting priorities for the conservation of Western Australia's threatened flora and fauna. A scoring system is used as a guide to allocating taxa to the IUCN (World Conservation Union) Red Book categories of threat.

An important strategy that DEC is using to assist the listing, prioritising and conservation management of vascular plants, is the development of Regional or District Threatened Flora Management Programs. These review the status of declared threatened flora and of priority taxa in a DEC Region or District, develop local priorities and outline management needs for declared rare and priority taxa.

A process has been developed for ranking threatened ecological communities.